A little after nine, those who’d brought instruments started drifting over to the big stone fireplace to begin tuning up. I knew I must have eaten off all my lipstick, and my fingers were sticky. I looked around for a lavatory but the one on this level was occupied and Joyce Ashe invited me to go downstairs. “Second door on the left.”
Like the other staircases, this one was also built of black wrought iron and slabs of granite, and it curved down into a smaller space than the one I’d just left. Although this room too opened onto a terrace directly beneath the one overhead, its indirect lighting and cheerful patchwork accents gave it the look and feel of an intimate family den. There was no fireplace per se, but a waist-high rough oak shelf ran from one side of the rock wall to the other. It was at least eight inches thick, more than two feet wide, and looked as if it had been hewn with a hand ax out of the heart of a huge, majestic tree.
The shelf held a collection of wrought-iron candleholders of every shape and size, from a four-foot column suitable for a medieval cathedral to dainty slender sticks. Each was fitted with an appropriate white candle, whether thick and squat or tall and tapered. There had to be at least fifty clustered along the length of the shelf.
On the wall above the candles hung a large assortment of family snapshots, each in a different black wire frame. The central photograph was an eighteen-by-twenty-four of Joyce and Bobby Ashe surrounded by at least a dozen young children.
“Our grandchildren,” said Joyce as she came down the steps behind me. “They’re what it’s all about. Do you have children, Deborah?”
“No,” I answered. “But lots of nieces and nephews.”
“Not the same,” she said cheerfully. “You’ll see. Bobby fusses at me all the time for spoiling them, but he’s just as bad and it’s hard not to want to give them everything.”
“Do they all live around here?”
“I wish! Bob Junior and his family are down in Asheville, but the rest are scattered from Manteo to Murphy.”
“What about the Osbornes?” I asked. “Do they have children here?”
“No. Their one daughter’s the assistant choral director for a big church up in Washington. Lives in Georgetown now.”
There was a music stand over by the terrace doors and several instruments propped against the wall. Joyce picked up a guitar and a fiddle. “I’m so pleased you could make it tonight. You’ll have to come back with your brother sometime.”
“You mean Will?”
“Didn’t he tell you? We heard him auction off some furniture in Raleigh the last time we were down. He’s funny and sharp and really knows how to work a crowd, doesn’t he?”
“He does that,” I agreed.
“So we’ve asked him to come do next year’s auction. We have a huge one for charity every September.”
“Oh?”
“Oh yes. See, that’s when a lot of our older seasonal people decide to move into retirement homes or assisted living. Instead of carting everything back to Florida or wherever, half the time they’ll just give it to us and take the tax deduction.” She touched the most massive of her iron candlesticks. “This originally came out of a twelfth-century castle near Madrid. You can’t believe the quality of the goods. Brings people in from all over the Southeast. We cleared close to forty thousand this year.”
A man emerged from the lavatory down the hall in time to hear Joyce’s last remarks.
“You really ought not to miss it,” he said enthusiastically. “I bought a tilt-top piecrust table last fall for a thousand less than I’d have paid at Sotheby’s.”
A thousand less? No wonder Will was anxious to cultivate this connection. If he made a good impression at next year’s auction, he could be called back as a private appraiser. Old people always seem to find him charming, and old people with tilt-top piecrust tables?
I congratulated the man, told Joyce I’d see her upstairs, and slipped inside the lavatory for a quick check in the mirror. No lipstick and my hair could definitely use a comb.
When I emerged, random chords and snatches of melody floated down the stairwell and made me hurry back upstairs to join in.
Billy Ed had left my guitar propped by the hearth, and I reclaimed it, then took a nearby stool. I soon learned that while most had played together before (indeed, two were professional entertainers), several were newcomers like me whom the Ashes had invited to help celebrate their new partnership with Norman Osborne.
We played a rollicking version of “Arkansas Traveler” just to make sure everybody was on the same page, followed by “New River Train,” with Bobby Ashe mimicking the haunting whistles on his harmonica. After that, different ones took the spotlight to play or sing.
I was surprised to see that Sunny Osborne played the dulcimer, and in response to calls from the audience, Norman Osborne stepped up with his guitar.
“This one’s always been special to me,” he said. “My mama taught me how to chord it when I was seven years old, but it wasn’t till I married little Sunshine Monroe here that I understood what the words really mean.”
With that, the two of them launched into that corny old standard, “You Are My Sunshine.” At least, it should have been corny. For the most part, they sang it straight. And yet they’d somehow altered the tune and the tempo enough to make it their own. When his baritone and her strong soprano wound in and out of the familiar melody their instruments were playing, they created new harmonies that made the old song fresh again. I later learned they’d been married for twenty-seven years, yet there was such tenderness in his voice they could have been newlyweds; and when she looked up at him during the final singing of “… you’ll never know, dear, how much I love you,” I was touched to see that her eyes were moist with unshed tears.
For a moment, I thought of Mother and Daddy, how they smiled at each other like this when they sang together, and once more I was wracked with doubt about Dwight’s reasons for marrying me, about settling for sex and friendship instead of waiting for the true love of someone who would look at me the way Norman was looking at Sunny.
The Osbornes were followed by the Ashes, who were urged on by their guests to perform a crowd-pleasing call-and-response full of bawdy double entendres that made everyone laugh.
At least a dozen guests had brought their instruments with them, and over the next hour different musicians shuttled in and out. Sunny Osborne, Joyce, and I settled into a groove, and we were content to play backup while others with more need to shine took front and center to sing or demonstrate some fancy picking or bowing. Among them was a white-haired old-timer in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt who played the banjo as if he’d been teethed on one. He was a big flirt and teased me into a short duel, which he let me win for a minute before leaving me in the dust helpless with laughter.
At ten we took a break and Lucius Burke brought over a bourbon and branch for Joyce and a frozen margarita for me that he’d mixed himself since the bartenders had left with the caterers after supper was over.
“You’re staying for the second set, aren’t you?” Joyce asked him.
“Sure,” said Burke, who had surprised me a little earlier by knowing all the words to “Muhlenberg County.” “I’m here till Bobby sings ‘Amazing Grace.’”
“That’s what we always close with,” Joyce explained to me.
Bobby was standing over by the bar in deep conversation with several people and seemed in no hurry to emulate the fat lady.
“Can I get you a glass of something?” Burke asked Sunny as she flexed her fingers after playing so long.
“Thanks, but I need to find Norman. See where he’s got to.” She set her dulcimer on the stool and made her way through the crowd.
I took another sip of my margarita and complimented Burke on his choice of drink. We exchanged mini-bios—where we went to law school, when we first ran for office—and I kept it strictly casual. No flirting on my part. I even made sure I held my glass with my left hand so that there was no missing Dwight’s ring. Eventually he turned back to Joyce, who had passed from solicitous hostess to relaxed guest at her own party.